Doug Ford: Pave Lake Superior!

Dear Mr. Ford,

I often tell people that they aren’t full-fledged Canadians until they have traversed this great country over land (either on our great highways or by train presumably). I have done this a few times now, and though it is the only way to truly internalize the vastness of this country, it’s become painfully aware to me that one simple improvement would streamline this process, boost the economy and create jobs and tourism. Let’s face it: the most annoying thing about crossing Canada is going through Northern Ontario. Sure, there may be some good fishing up there, but you and I know that once is enough, twice is okay, but thrice is too many times to see millions of trees, a bunch of rocks and almost get yourself killed by moose. Sure, many people choose to cross this section via the USA, which is much faster and crosses some interesting country with some interesting folks, but not all of us are allowed to travel freely through the USA, and when people do so Canada is missing out on revenue from fuel, food and lodging sales.

My solution to how dreadful the drive through Northern Ontario is for Canadians is simple — Pave Lake Superior! Paving this big, stupid lake will not only create jobs in the short run, but would open up space for new cities and towns to emerge, as well as obviously drastically shortening the time and distance it takes to cross Canada. Lake Superior is just a big, dumb, flat lake with some stupid fish in it. If the environmentalists are concerned about the effect on fish, we can put a few holes in the concrete maybe to let some light in and so people can fish in them (like ice fishing). Having a big, flat, concrete plane where there is currently just a bunch of water could open up a new economic future for Ontario, as people the world round will come to engage in drag racing and marvel at the engineering brilliance. If you want, you could put your name on the slab that can only be seen from the air! Also, speaking of air, people could land planes on the slab and such, expanding the province’s airport system which in turn will be good for the economy.

Sure, I realize that Lake Superior has an international border slicing through the middle of it. I’m not encouraging you to get into an international incident with our neighbours. Simply pave the lake up to the border and leave the stupid water section for the yanks. I can’t guarantee that people like myself won’t walk up to the edge and cast lures off the edge in search of Walleye and Pike, but as long as my feet are on the Canadian side what can they do?

In conclusion, in order to expedite cross-Canada travel and trade and make the trip across Ontario far less dreadful, and for a bunch of other reasons (including things I haven’t thought of yet), I strongly suggest that you Pave Lake Superior!
Thanks for your time,
G

Having Trouble Locating the Water Fountain

Hello BC Ferries,
Not that I have any other option, I am currently waiting for a ferry from Victoria to Vancouver as a walk-on, and I am in Berth 1.  I am very thirsty and have been having troubles locating the water fountain.  Where is it?  Why is it not clearly marked?  I am so thirsty that I had to drink warm water from the automatic tap in the men’s washroom.  Is this related to the construction going on here?  I find it very odd that I have been provided with free electricity and wireless internet, yet I cannot find a water fountain.
Please respond, and also please act.  I’m sure that hundreds of people pass through this berth every day, and people need water.
G

Response to ‘Wake-up Call for the alt-right: a Beige Horizon is Inevitable’

Dear Mr. Lazarus:

CBC’s Office of the Ombudsman deals with complaints about CBC’s news and current affairs content. The Ombudsman has a mandate to determine whether information content the CBC has produced fully respects CBC’s journalism policy.

Entertainment programming is generally beyond the mandate and jurisdiction of this office.  However, I have forwarded your e-mail to Michelle Daly, Senior Director, Comedy, CBC Scripted Content, so that your concerns may be shared with the appropriate programmers.

Reply to ‘Fake News Reported Yesterday’

Dear Mr. Lazarus:

I write to acknowledge receipt of your email.  I have shared it with Jennifer McGuire, General Manager and Editor in Chief of CBC News, so that she will be aware of your concerns.

Sincerely,

Esther Enkin

Letter to CBC – “Beige Horizon”

Wake-up Call for the alt-right: a Beige Horizon is Inevitable

The CBC “comedy” television show This Hour has 22 Minutes recently presented a music video both on TV and the internet (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wb55teb1gJ0) by the above title. The video unabashedly calls for the extinction of all the world’s races and amalgamation into one “beige” race. It poses this future as inevitable and positive, claiming that “we’ll all look the same by the year 3000”. Would it be okay for CBC to produce a video chanting “white power, white power, white power” and calling for the extinction of other races? Is diversity not considered a value by the CBC? Everyone being the same is the opposite of diversity. This content is not presented as satire as well; they are serious.
I find this video to be hackneyed, unfunny and non-factual (the “rapper” claims that “we’ve been [genetically] mix ‘n’ matchin’ since the break of day”, which is factually inaccurate.
Please cancel ‘This Hour has 22 Minutes’ for advocating genocide and fire everyone involved in this segment.
Kindly inform me via email when the aforementioned people have been fired. Thanks.

[sent by online form]

Letter to CBC Ombudsman: Fake News Reported Yesterday

Fake News Reported Yesterday

I was driving through Manitoba yesterday and listened to the news on CBC Radio. The article in question was about the White House expelling Russian diplomats and imposing sanctions. The presenter referred to supposed Russian gov’t hacking that supposedly influenced the US election as though it’s a proven fact that this occurred when there is zero evidence to support this claim. At the very least the presenter should have included the qualifier “alleged” before the dubious claim in question. Reporting unsubstantiated rumours as though they are facts is misleading and wrong, and I’d like to expect better from the CBC.
Please inform me by email of what actions are taken on this matter.
Thanks.

[submitted by online form]

Tampa Airport – Nix the Pop Music

Hello.  I had to wait for several hours in the Tampa Airport today which means that I had to hear several hours of terrible corporate pop music wherever I went, even the washrooms and outside.  Air travel is stressful enough without having to withstand awful music for hours on end.  This has ruined my day and may even ruin my night and my day tomorrow, because pop music easily gets in my head and stays there.  There is absolutely no need for any music at the airport, and if you did play music I would assume that it would be relaxing instrumental music of some kind, not aggravating, obnoxious corporate garbage.  You can do better.

Elizabeth May – Please Don’t Back Down

Dear Elizabeth May,
Generally I am not a Green Party supporter, though I admire what you’ve been doing in the House of Commons.
Yesterday I came across the articles I’ve linked below.  I had no idea that your party plans to overhaul the Divorce Act and I applaud you for that.  I saw absolutely nothing sexist or anti-feminist in the quoted section of your platform.  In fact, it appeared to me that your party actually downplayed how brutal the family courts treat men, specifically, in this country.
These articles display clearly how feminists will attack in mob formation anyone who supports equality in our family courts and anything but an overtly gynocentric legal and social system.  It’s time that someone prominent like yourself digs in and stands up to these people’s lunacy and mob mentality.  Yes, people should have ways out of abusive relationships, but divorce is a scourge on our society and is particularly harmful to children, which are our future.  The family courts only make things worse in all the ways your platform mentions and worse.  Suicide rates, for example, spike among men who have gone through a divorce.
Thank you so much for reading my letter, and for your work, and please bring some sense and reality back into left wing politics — stand up to these bullies.
Yours Truly,
G
Toronto, Ontario

http://www.metronews.ca/news/toronto/2015/08/25/green-party-to-change-anti-feminist-inaccruate-platform.html
http://www.canadianprogressiveworld.com/2015/08/26/green-party-platform-criticized-for-being-anti-feminist/

Q: Provide a Balanced Perspective on Vaccines

Dear Q,

I was very disappointed by your program today.  Your so-called “discussion” on what to do about the anti-vaccination movement was very one-sided, and I expect better from the Q team.

While it’s possible that some vaccines do actually work, you can’t blame people for having doubts about what the government and big pharma wants to inject into their children’s bodies, especially considering how many people have already died due to big pharma’s negligence combined with gov’t cooperation.  I’d like to remind you that over 100 000 people die each year from taking prescription drugs as recommended.

We are currently experiencing a health epidemic, especially among children, and it’s undoubtedly due to factors in the environment.  Nobody knows exactly what is causing the explosion in autism and other chronic diseases, but one thing’s for sure — following the government’s health advice is not working.  It is absolutely arrogant to assume that none of the chronic conditions currently on the rise are caused by routine injections of heavy metals like mercury.  The pharmaceutical industry is a massive industry with tentacles in many other industries, such as the media, and one cannot be expected to get balanced information about it in the mass media.  I do, however, expect more of my favourite radio show, Q.

It seems to me as though every pro-vaccine activist merely appeals to the authority of the government and big pharma controlled organizations like the Centre for Disease Control, hide behind slogans, or mention a supposedly discredited study by Andrew Wakefield in the UK as though his was the only study linking vaccines to autism, when in fact at least 22 studies link vaccines with autism.  The worst though, is when people mention the experience of Jenny McCarthy, as though because a mother used to be a model, she is too stupid to have any insights into her child’s condition.  Pro-vaccine zealots like your guests like to imply that only crazy, uneducated people question the safety and effectiveness of vaccines, when in fact many doctors and scientists are among those with doubts and objections.  I consider it your job at Q to provide a wide range of perspectives on any given issue, and usually you do, but today on Q were guilty of subscribing to the dogma that vaccines are always safe and effective while failing to address that there are multiple billions of dollars relying on the perpetuation of this dogma and without providing any of the perspectives offered by the anti-vaccine movement.  By doing this you trivialize the experiences of vaccine damaged people and their parents, and you cheat your audience of a fair discussion.

Lucija Tomljenovic, a molecular chemist from  UBC co-authored a study at UBC showing that one is more likely to experience adverse affects from Merck’s Gardasil vaccine than contract the disease it supposedly immunizes against.  I’m sure she would have been happy to talk to you, yet you chose to air three guests with essentially the same point of view.

Please do better Q, and sharpen your bullshit detectors.

Yours,
G

To Q: Treat “Smartphones” like Drugs

Dear Q,

Something in your interview with Randi Zuckerberg really resonated with me.  You know how she mentioned that she needs her “hit” of info from her mobile device every morning? Well that’s exactly what life was like for me when I was deepest in the clutches of tobacco addiction — the last thing I did before going to sleep and the first thing I did when I woke up was smoke a cigarette.  She later makes light of the apparent fact that people get together at restaurants and stare at their phones rather than being social with the people they are sitting with.  Remember when restaurants used to be filled with smokers and cigarette smoke? (ie. people engaging in antisocial behaviour in public because they’re addicts.) 98% of women would rather forgo sex for a year than shut off their phone for a weekend??  Can you think of a more glaring sign of the apocalypse? These devices are clearly very addictive, and if women would rather fiddle with their phones than engage in the natural, life-giving act of coitus we are in big trouble as a society and as a species.

We need to face the fact that mobile devices are addictive.  They act like drugs in the brain much like gambling does, and the designers of these devices and social networking sites know this and exploit it.  These devices are rewiring the teenage brain, provide access to porn to children and teens 24/7, are used to facilitate deadly bullying and harassment (think Amanda Todd and Rehtaeh Parsons), are not proven safe for human health and their manufacture necessitates environmental destruction and human exploitation.

I don’t care if I’m the only person in the world willing to say it: but we really need to rethink the proliferation of “smartphones” in our society.  They do far  more harm than good, and just because they are available on the market doesn’t mean every man, woman and child should have one. I think that, at least, there should be a legal age to own a “smartphone”.  If there’s a legal age for tobacco and alcohol, why wouldn’t there be a legal age for a product that can give you cancer, debilitates your ability to pay attention, is destructive to the earth and society, provides free pornography to children and is very, very addictive?

Thanks,

G

[Sent by email Nov 25. Q is an excellent cultural affairs show on CBC Radio]